Technology

This is a sort of follow on article from Thoughts On Copyright. The first article goes into how copyright and licensing affects the freedom of use of any material that anyone produces.

This article is about the different types of content I may produce and my thoughts on how I should license my work. If you are thinking of creating any work of your own then the ideas raised in this post may be of benefit to you but make sure that any license you use aligns with your way of thinking before you commit to it.

Once I have defined what I want the license to achieve then I can get into the territory of finding a suitable license for each type of material that I may produce. From my point of view that will include everything from posts on my blog and any of my other websites, websites designed for other people, photos and other graphical images, any books I may write and software applications for both Windows and the Web—possibly even Linux, Mac, iPhone or even something else down the line.

I can be a bit of a nerd when it comes to computers… I use quite a few on a regular basis.

There is my main PC, the PC I have at work, the media centre PC next to the TV in the front room, then there is the laptop and even my iPhone. That’s not including Shirley’s computer or the 2 servers I own running various virtual operating systems and the handful of fix-me-up jobs in the garage.

Anyway the point of all this is that there are certain files that I occasionally need to have access to from something other than my main PC.

As an example I am currently reading a couple of eBooks. It would be great if I could just open the eBook from any of the computers I use when I have a spare 20 minutes. Then when I have finished reading I could find a new book to download and it would instantly be available from every computer I use.

This week I finished the website I was designing for an old friend HenleyHorseTravel.co.uk.

The project was great for me as I used to dabble in web stuff many years ago but haven’t found the time for it recently.

I have learnt a lot from the experience from both a design perspective as well as get some hands on experience with the latest technologies and languages behind web design.

The biggest challenge for me was the actual design. I don’t claim to be a designer so much as a developer. If I plan to get into web design—even if it is only for part of my income—then I am going to have to brush up a bit on the artistic side of things.

Don’t worry I am not talking about this blog. I have decided to quit my day job.

I have been working for the same company for almost 10 years. To me that feels like forever.

In fact the routine has become so ingrained in me that it feels like there is nothing else to life except the 9 to 5 at the office and maybe, if I’m lucky, a couple of hours in the evening to keep on top of any personal stuff. That personal stuff has mounted up over time and I feel like I just do not get anything done at home at all.

Now this may seem like a strange solution to some but my response to this was to break out of the routine, by leaving my 9 to 5 behind, and try something different. The only problem is that I have yet to define this something different.

All I know for definite is that I am going to start my own company, which happens to be an item on my bucket list anyway.

This week I got a phonecall out of the blue from an old friend who wanted me to design a website for him. I used to love all things web and was always playing with web pages. Learning as much as I could about HTML, JavaScript, CSS and PHP.

After a while I noticed that pages were displayed differently by every browser and so things started to become a mess of special cases for each of the browsers. As I got older my priorities changed and so along with all the extra code that was being required my interest waned.

Luckily things are starting to improve. With the improvements in browsers and the languages that describe the web pages, including advances like AJAX, things are starting to become interesting again.

With my goal of improving my web presence he couldn’t have picked a better time as I was keen to dig in and (re)learn all I could about web design anyway.

I like the idea of getting rid of most of the paper that endlessly sits in my filing cabinet. So I have been trying to scan in most documents I receive for a while now and then shredding them if they are not required to be kept for some reason.

Obviously there are some documents that you have to keep, at least for a period of time, so I do not intend to completely remove the need for a filing system. My aim is to reduce the amount of paper that needs to be stored and also to keep any documents available in an electronic version for me to refer to at a later date.

To aid in this endeavour I recently purchased the Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 scanner. My reasoning for this choice was a combination of price and functionality and I couldn’t be happier with it.